Well, it didn’t take long for the Liberal majority to start discouraging men away from marriage and child-raising.
The leftist Globe and Mail reports:
In promising to enact all of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the federal Liberals have agreed to remove a section of law that allows parents to spank their kids without fear of prosecution.
[…]Kathy Lynn, the chair of a British Columbia-based organization called Corinne’s Quest, which opposes legalized spanking, says her group is “thrilled” with the TRC’s recommendation.
[…][T]eachers fear taking away the law could leave them vulnerable to charges in cases in which they are required to use force – breaking up schoolyard fights, for instance.
Does this ban on spanking make sense, rationally? Let’s look at the evidence and then decide.
Consider this story from the the UK Telegraph.
Excerpt:
A study found that youngsters smacked up to the age of six did better at school and were more optimistic about their lives than those never hit by their parents.
They were also more likely to undertake voluntary work and keener to attend university, experts discovered.
The research, conducted in the United States, is likely to anger children’s rights campaigners who have unsuccessfully fought to ban smacking in Britain.
[…]Those who had been smacked up to the age of six performed better in almost all the positive categories and no worse in the negatives than those never punished physically.
Teenagers who had been hit by their parents from age seven to 11 were also found to be more successful at school than those not smacked but fared less well on some negative measures, such as getting involved in more fights.
However, youngsters who claimed they were still being smacked scored worse than every other group across all the categories.
Prof Gunnoe found little difference in the results between sexes and different racial groups.
By the way, this is not the worst crime against parenting to come out of Canada. Remember the case where the divorced woman got a female lawyer, went before a female judge, in order to get the court to overturn her ex-husband’s grounding of their daughter for sending nude pictures from his computer? Yes. That’s what you get when you live in Canada – a nanny state society run by the left. I remember in a previous story, a female judge actually convicted a man for spanking his child. They went to court, and the man was convicted for spanking an unruly child. Why would any man want to raise kids who could not be punished for misbehaving?
I personally don’t like spanking as a way to discipline, but I can imagine situations where the behavior is so bad that a spanking might be necessary, e.g. – cruelty to pets, insulting their mother, etc. The point is that if I am the one getting up in the morning to go to work to earn the money, it’s my family, and my decision about what I am trying to produce. Public school teachers, judges and politicians work for me – I pay their salaries. They need to butt out of my private life and mind their own business. No man should get involved in a family if all he is going to do is pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce children who lack self-control and responsibility.
The path to responsibility goes through hard work and accepting the consequences for bad behavior. It’s much better to learn it when you are younger rather than older. Nobody likes spanking, but it’s better for a child to learn that stealing is wrong when he is 5 than when he is 25. And maybe that’s why so many boys who are raised fatherless become criminals. It is up to families to decide what punishment is best – not big government.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
If your child is doing some cruel things to animals, i dont think spanking would be needed more like a psychiatrist- cause that sounds like a serial killer in the making. Cause if at a young age a child can do cruel things to an animal then when they get older doing it to a person wont be a problem.
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Ok, I meant like pulling the dog’s tail or something.
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Oh, i thought you meant like something really cruel. Okay, I gotcha
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I agree that a ban on spanking does not make sense. On the other hand I agree that spanking has often been abused in many homes and schools, including in Canada’s aboriginal residential schools to which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission speaks. This is a pendulum swing from one extreme to the other.
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This is typical fare for “Canada the good”. What they really need to criminalize is “fooling oneself.”
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My father was abused as a child, and I’m no psychologist, but I can say that my father is very problematic. He has extreme anger issues and he even admits that it’s his upbringing from his parents that has caused his negative attitude toward life. He is very negative all the time and the reason he was so unsuccessful was because his parents abused him. Spanked him and hit him frequently for “punishments.” Since he has been taught that spanking is good, I have also been a victim of spanking. In no way has it taught me “responsibility” or made me a better person. I agree that it should be illegal. It is abuse for a child to be struck by their own parent. What century are we in? If a full grown man did that to a full grown woman, that would be considered sexual abuse, so why is it okay to do it to a CHILD. Sounds like ABUSE to me. I have seen scientific evidence that it HARMS the child to abuse them in any way. In fact, I am no expert but I took Psychology and I learned that most of the time, punishments do not help the child to grow. I am glad that somebody is finally saying something (although I don’t live in Canada) and abuse to a child is not okay. It is a country’s job to make sure their citizens and children are treated with respect. Spanking is not respect. I also don’t understand how this was under the feminist tag?
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“If a full grown man did that to a full grown woman, that would be considered sexual abuse, so why is it okay to do it to a CHILD.”
If a full grown man grounded his full grown wife, that would be considered relationship abuse. So by your logic we discover that parents cannot exact any discipline on their children since nothing of consequence would pass the “Can I do it to my fully grown wife” test.
Liberal logic…
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You don’t make any sense… Did you not read my comment? Children do not respond well to punishments, and if you honestly think that hitting a child is okay, then I am scared of you… I am also talking about my personal experiences and what I learned in psychology.
“Liberal logic…” It’s not liberal, it’s common sense. LOL you’re too funny.
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The study I linked in the main post disagrees with your unsupported assertion. Opinions without evidence may work in psychology class when you get As for agreeing with the teacher, but out here in the real world we believe in evidence. Let the parents decide since they are paying the bills, not government ideologues.
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Ok. Let’s look at the big picture here though. Your child is a human, not a dog. I think I’ll stick to treating mine with respect. I don’t care if there’s “evidence” I’m not going to harm something that I’m supposed to care for. Wow when will that get through people’s heads.
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Thanks for sharing your experience and perspective. I don’t think WK’s “spanking” and what you described in your father’s experience are the same thing. What he experienced sounds like abuse. The methods and goals are very different. Spanking is intended to discourage unacceptable behavior. Abuse is to vent anger on someone else.
A Small Spanking Experience
When one of my children was about 2, she once attempted to put her hand in an electrical outlet. Now, I could sit and try to reason with her, laying out a case for about the consequences of such an action. I could then repeat the action every day for years, hoping, that eventually, she would get it. Instead, I simplified it: I gently spanked her offending hand and told her “No” sternly. She, in her young mind and with her infant understanding, made the connections herself, because the very next day she saw the outlet, pointed to it, looked at me, and said “No. No.” We never had a problem again. She was not electrocuted and she’s here for us to enjoy life with today.
Are you a parent, by chance?
Being a parent changes your perspective on no few things…
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” What century are we in?”
This is not a very convincing argument. Simply stating the current year or century is devoid of any sort of rational force.
“I have seen scientific evidence that it HARMS the child to abuse them in any way.”
This is a weasel sentence, considering your failure to provide said
“scientific evidence”.
It’s also a straw man to suggest that all spanking is “abuse”. I, however, would call some spanking measures as discipline. Though I expect you to call that a euphemism; but I, and I believe many others, would argue otherwise.
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Pointing out the type of argument I have is also a weak argument. I just came here to state my opinion & hopefully make you realize what I mean. When I said “what century are we in” I was being sarcastic lol I can see now that you are the overly serious type. Your comment was literally unnecessary so I would like to politely end the conversation here. Let’s just agree to disagree.
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“Pointing out the type of argument I have is also a weak argument.”
Could anyone imagine stating this in a science or philosophy conference? One would get shamed and laughed out of the room.
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@MT, I hope you read this and I’m sorry for both you and your father.
My father always said intelligence is the ability to make meaningful distinctions between similar things. Calm sober limited physical discipline and just flailing the hell out of.a child are not the same thing, I think I can even say the latter is different in kind, not just degree.
Stefan Molyneux makes the best case against spanking, but I find it ultimately unconvincing because children are psychologically significantly different from adults. They are less developed and when it com s to behavior that can pose a threat to the child’s life, or constitutes a truly grave moral problem, they have to be made to understand with a method that reinforces the gravity of the situation.
Honestly some of the responses you received were less than charitable. There’s a natural human tendency to just jump on someone who disagrees, regardless of the fact that it’s usually rhetorically impotent as well as unkind. The reason it’s important to discuss this though is that support for things like the spanking law will result less in safe children and more in people being legally jammed up and having their lives ruined in a way that isn’t saving a child from abuse so much as depriving them of a parent and replacing said parent with an abusive State.
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You know I used to really love Canada but I am starting to fear that I will be fleeing persecution before the end of my life… and not because I spank my children but because I dare to hold a different opinion than my government.
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There seems to be a majority of the country that believes in forcing their secular left views on others. Now that they have a liberal majority led by a turnip, it will only get worse.
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